Tuesday, August 30, 2011

To start with - Holy cow, this is post #199! I'll have to think up something cool for 200...

A little bit of brush time allowed me to finish off the Land Raider and Rhino that I've been working on for the Thousand Sons, as well as getting the Predator almost caught up.

At the moment I tend to paint all of my models as though they just came off the showroom floor, but seeing such awesome weathering techniques displayed by SeveralAwesomeBloggers, I'm rather tempted to delve into utilizing some weathering powders and such. Still a bit hesitant to do so, but I'm planning on picking up the Forge World Imperial Armor Model Mastercraft book as I hear it's an excellent resource.

I utilized the advice from Ron over at From The Warp regarding transferring a printed symbol onto a model as a template for painting. I printed out a sheet of Thousand Sons symbols from the BoLS .pdf download section, and cut one out that was the appropriate size. Once I coated the back of it with graphite (aka scribbled all over it with a pencil) I then flipped it over onto the top hatch and traced over the symbol with a ball point pen. The graphite was transferred to the hatch and I was able to use it as the template to paint in the symbol. Not perfect, but from across the table it looks pretty decent. I'll be honing that technique quite a bit over the course of the army I'm sure!

Finally, the Predator is almost done. I still need to work on some detailing (the scroll, a couple lenses, etc.), and figure out where I'm going to put the legion symbol. It was suggested to me to try and set one over and across the two front hatches, but the attempts I made looked pretty terrible and I ended up erasing/painting over the pencil lines. I may just do the bit nova on the rear hatch and a smaller one on the white mantlet on the turret autocannon.

I'm definitely enjoying the paint scheme more and more, and one of the best things about painting tanks is how, when you're done, it appears that a huge chunk of the army has paint on it! ...Of course I'm sure I'll be grumbling about the scheme when I'm up to my ears in 40 tactical marines. Heh.

Friday, August 26, 2011

As I'm starting to get excited about getting the Thousand Sons going, I rooted around in the Closet of Doom and pulled out all the various boxes of bits and kits and whatnot that I've been squirreling away over the last year and started laying it out.

As you can see, there's more unbuilt in boxes than there is built. I've been going with the "Paint some before building more" technique to keep myself motivated, but I'm starting to get to the point where I want to try some test games, which means I need to build a mess of infantry. The 40 Dragonforge bases in the back will be Tactical squads (bits in the two battle force boxes and the orange shoebox) and the ten in front of those two big blocks will be the Devastator squad. Four more Jump Veterans will round out the Assault squad, after which it's all transports and tanks - a Drop Pod, 3 more Rhinos, a Whirlwind, and the Storm Tank. I've commissioned Machinator (who made the Rhino Kits and is well known for his Fellblades of Renown) to build a Falchion Superheavy Tank for the army - that being the Heresy-Era Marine version of the Shadowsword.

The painting chart is rather colorful at the moment, I took stock of all the bits and found I was actually short a few things that I'll need to finalize one of the Tactical squads. Looks like another MaxMini order is in the pipe to get more Steam Knight heads. When I first started I figured 50 would be plenty, but I guess that was wishful thinking!

...Man the size of these projects can get out of hand. My initial intent was to do a small 2500 point boutique army, and it's bloomed into a 4000+ point monster!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Managed to get a little brush time in over the last couple days and finished up the Sekhmet Terminators for the Thousand Sons. Fairly straightforward update from the last post, I added loincloths to the models that could take them, and finished up the highlighting. I'm going with a bone-white color for the army using a Graveyard Earth > Kommando Khaki > Bleached Bone > White progression which, along with the crimson and gold, I think ties in well with the pseudo-Egyptian theme. Ordinarily I use a Shadow Grey > Fortress Grey > White progression which gives a 'cooler' white, but for these I like the warmer tone building up from an earthtone gives the models.

With another unit painted, I rewarded myself with some build time as well. Yet another tank to accompany the armored complement of the army, this is a Sabre Tank Hunter, armed with a Neutron Pulse Laser. During the Heresy, these tanks were rightly feared by opposing tank commanders, however due to their high technological requirements to maintain, many Sabres were re-armed as the more common Vindicator variant as the Heresy progressed.

The resin add-on bits were procured from a fellow Tempus Fugitive who goes by the name 'Da Vinci', whose work can be seen on several forums besides the TF boards, and he was a true pleasure to work with. I picked up a couple of these Sabre upgrade kits as well as a pair of Olympia Storm Tanks which are currently lurking in a box in the Closet of Doom. I'm really looking forward to building them!

For those of you interested in Heresy-Era gaming, Ulfhedin has been diligently working on a MASSIVE fandex for use during their campaign weekends that runs the gamut from the Great Crusade era all the way through The Scourging. At a whopping 103 pages (and counting) it's a fantastic resource for folks who are more interested in friendly games than hardcore tournament players. The penultimate edition is currently available for download HERE, and the campaign weekend pack that details the specifics of the games they'll be running on October 14th-16th is HERE. The campaign weekend takes place at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield, near Nottingham in England. I'm quite sad not to be able to attend this year (being a damned dirty Yank), but I've been scrimping and saving for a trip across the pond to participate next year!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

While I was about it, I got the red on the Mk.1c Predator and Rhino kits I'd picked up from Machinator at Blood and Skulls Industries. The red followed the same recipe (Dark Flesh, Red Gore, Blood Red, Baal Red), I am quite pleased at how well these hearken back to the original kits, while maintaining the somewhat more 'chunky' current-era models.

At this point all three tanks are at the same stage, next up is going in and re-blacking all the appropriate areas, then start the detailing process on the trim and doors. I'm still pondering how best to distribute the white and gold trim colors however.

I find if I go with too much gold, they start to look more like Word Bearers, so I guess I need to ensure there's sufficient fields of white to balance it out. On the Rhino, I can do up the side doors in white with the red starburst symbol, but I'm not sure about the Predator. Definitely open to suggestions at this point!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

I couldn't wait to get some paint back on the Land Raider, as well as spend a little time with the tank banner that LuckyNo.5 made for me. I went one more round with a small dental pick to get what last little bit of old paint I could, then gave it a hit of primer.

For the red on my Thousand Sons, I start with a Dark Flesh basecoat, followed by a heavy drybrush of Red Gore, and a final light drybrush of Blood Red on the extreme edges. Once that's done, the whole thing gets a medium wash of Baal Red to tie it all together and bring down the harsh highlights. Now that the main armor is done, I'll need to go back over all the remaining parts with Chaos Black before the next stage of colors are applied.

After the excellent work LuckyNo.5 did on my blog banner, I asked him if he'd be interested in doing some 'real' banners for my army, and he came back with the design above, in both a color and black and white version. Ordinarily I'd just paint everything onto the black and white template, but the colored version ended up looking so nice that I decided that I'd just paint onto it. Basically I only painted in the red sections, and went over the text with a micon pen here and there. Overall I'm thrilled with how it turned out (though there's still a little touch-up required here and there before it's done).

At this point I'm debating how I want to apply the trim colors. At the moment I'm thinking white doors with the red starburst symbol, and gold for the rest of the trim, as the Land Raider is designed to carry Magnus and his honor guard Terminators, and it seems that most of the veterans in the army are painted red and gold, contrasting with the red and white of the rank-and-file troops. That being the case, for the Rhinos and Predators however I believe I'll go with predominately white trim with minor gold detail here and there. All in all, I'm really happy with how the tank is turning out, and I'm pretty jazzed about painting the army as a whole.

....I'm sure that will fade when I'm painting the 30th tactical marine. Heh.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

First things first - LuckyNo.5 over at Eye of Error recently posted about his Will Design For Models business and I took him up on it (as my previous banner of the last three years was a hack MSPaint job). He solicited some ideas from me - I knew that I wanted to incorporate the 'real' picture of the 7th that I'd used previously, but other than that I gave him free reign. He provided me with several initial design ideas, one of which was more or less ideal and after a couple iterations he came up with the new banner proudly gracing the top of my blog! I was extremely pleased with the results - LuckyNo.5 was an absolute pleasure to work with, and I heartily recommend getting in contact with him if you're interested in a new banner! I was so pleased that I've commissioned a graphic to use for the banner on the tank below as well!

I've been keeping an eye out on ebay for an old Rogue Trader era Land Raider that wasn't ridiculously expensive, and was finally able to score one for a rather reasonable price. On the downside it definitely needed a little TLC before it would be usable for my Thousand Sons. Once it arrived it was obvious that it needed a thorough soak in Simple Green to remove the rather thickly-applied paint - after three days of alternating between soaking and scrubbing it came to light that the tank had been painted and repainted no less than three times!

No matter how long you soak and scrub however, there's always a wee bit of paint that stubbornly refuses to come off. Nevertheless, this is much, much cleaner than I was expecting. The Lascannons and Heavy Bolters that came with the original kit were a bit too bent and/or broken, so I took a queue from Ron's Deathwing Land Raider and re-purposed some current-era bits to re-arm the tank appropriately.

The side sponsons are a combination of Predator and Land Raider bits, while the Heavy Bolters are leftovers from the countless Chimeras I've built over the years. With the addition of some brass rod to act as a banner pole, it's more or less ready for primer!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

I'm commissioning a new banner from LuckyNo.5 over at Eye of Error, which got me rooting around in the depths of my personal cogitator for the picts scanned from the old red Compendium. I've referenced the history in my posts in the past, but had never shared the actual pages. So, for those who haven't ever flipped through the old RT era books and for old hands who remember the old days, here's a bit of a blast from the past!

This page has the history of the regiment, as well as the organizational table for D Company, which has been the seed and inspiration for my guard over the years. This current go-around I'm not planning on slavishly recreating the entire company as it's a) not particularly competitive in the current edition and b) vast chunks of the list have been invalidated or changed significantly by the current codex. Eagle-eyed readers will note the planet the regiment was raised from is spelled "Mordion" but the references to the Hive Cities and the swift and orderly reprisal against the Night Rippers attempts to take over leads me to believe the current day Mordians can trace their history to this article. It is for this reason that "my" Mordians don't wear the customary dress blues that most of the units drawn from Mordia do - the ganger background means they are a bit less rigid than most of the regiments drawn from that world.

The next two pages have an illustration of D company (by the awesome Pete Knifton), as well as some flavor text describing the various units. I've tried to incorporate elements of this history into my own armies, with varying degrees of success. This current go-around I'm sticking much closer to the described colors and symbols the 7th uses on their uniforms and vehicles, including the fist-and-knife emblem. I've pulled out a few squads and vehicles from the guard and will hopefully have some brush time over the weekend...

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Based on #2501's excellent suggestion (from Musings of a Metal Mind), I went back and added the Thousand Sons legion symbol to the loincloth which definitely helped break up the 'huge field of white' issue. So, the model is now... Completed-er? I guess we'll see if there ends up being a 'Completed-est' post on down the road...

In other news, I'm off to GenCon tomorrow for a nice long weekend of geekery! Not participating in the 40k tournament, although I am hoping to have time to swing by and snap some pictures of the event. On the gaming front for the weekend, several friends of mine all gather there each year to participate in a living Star Wars RPG campaign which uses the old D6 WEG rules - an elegant system from a more civilized age...

About Me

I've been an avid follower of 40k since the original days of Rogue Trader. Back in 1988 I picked up my first copy of the rulebook and good old RTB01 - the box of plastic beaky space marines and the rest as they say is history. 20 years later I'm still playing with little army men... And enjoying every minute of it!